Metal detecting: Saturday moan

Here’s what we said exactly 9 years ago about paying rewards for obeying the law instead of increasing the penalties for disobeying it. We still stand by it:

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Let us pay detectorists the complement of treating them like the rest of society, not as a group that includes an invisible but existing proportion of feral crooks that need vast payments to ensure they don’t break the law and murder our cultural heritage. What other sector of British government policy copes with public damage caused by moral imbecilism by PAYING people to act properly? And what country in all the world but Britain, dresses such a policy up as sensible? No, we suggest Britain saves those millions of pounds and spends them on childrens’ hospices.

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Man goes into museum, with permission. Pockets £5,000 jewel which he knows does not and never can belong to him. Treasure Registrar announces “Do bring it back, we’ll give you a £5,000 reward and a Certificate of Appreciation”.